I work 70 hours a week. I'm successful—partner at my law firm by 38, well compensated, respected in my field. I'm also exhausted, my marriage is strained, and I see my kids mostly on weekends. When I try to cut back, I feel guilty. Part of this is practical—my position requires the hours. But part of it is deeper: I believe work is good. I believe I was put on this earth to use my abilities to their fullest. Coasting feels like sin. My therapist says I've "moralized" work in an unhealthy way. "Work is just work," she says. "It's a means to an end—money, security, maybe some satisfaction. But it's not a calling, and treating it as one lets your firm exploit you." But when I imagine working just enough to get by—doing adequate work, having adequate success, being an adequate lawyer—something in me rebels. That feels like a betrayal of the gifts I've been given. Is my dedication to work a virtue or a pathology? Is there meaning in labor itself, or am I fooling myself? — The Workaholic in Dallas

From Letters of John Calvin, Volume II: Compiled from the Original Manuscripts and Edited with Historical Notes

"God calls each person to a station—faithfulness in that calling glorifies Him more than leisure"

Your therapist speaks the language of a secular age that has lost the concept of calling. She reduces work to transaction—hours exchanged for money—and wonders why you feel that something sacred is at stake. Because it is. God gave you abilities and placed you in a position to use them. To coast, to do "adequate" work when excellence is within your reach, is to bury the talent you were given. This does not mean your firm owns you. It means your work belongs to God before it belongs to your employer. But here is the harder truth: your calling includes your family. If your work makes you a stranger to your children, you have not honored your calling—you have distorted it. The question is not whether to work less, but whether your work serves the purposes for which you were placed in this life. Excellence in law that destroys your household is not faithfulness. It is idolatry with professional credentials.

From Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

"Industry is a virtue, but a virtue among many—the balanced life serves oneself and others best"

You have made a religion of work, and like most religions, yours offers both truth and trap. Industry is indeed a virtue—I built my life on it. Early to bed, early to rise. A penny saved. But industry exists alongside temperance, justice, and humility. Your therapist is wrong that work is "just work"—it shapes character, creates value, gives structure to life. But you are wrong that working yourself to exhaustion honors the gifts you have been given. What good is success if you are too tired to enjoy it, too absent to know your children, too strained to sustain your marriage? I worked hard, yes. But I also retired at 42 to pursue science, diplomacy, writing, and the pleasures of good company. The balanced life is not coasting—it is wisdom. Your firm will extract every hour you offer and ask for more. That is the nature of firms. Wisdom lies in knowing when to close the ledger and go home.